I was watching a panel discussion from a 2010 NAMI Convention (you can tell what I do for fun!) at http://vimeo.com/13277920.
I understand that this topic might be taboo and is probably just as controversial as pro-life and pro-choice, but how do you know if you're anosognosiac (excuse, don't know how the word is used properly, and there are some things spell-check won't correct)?
I would like to think that if I was standing in my underwear on a milkcrate in Manhattan (minus tons of alcohol in me) that I would be aware that there's something not quite right...but it sounds like that's part of the illness...so how do you know?
BTW, if anyone's not heard of this, anosognosia can be an effect of stroke.
Anasognosia may be a mental disorder, but it is also due to brain changes from bleeds, surgeries, etc.
▪There are two types of denial. The first type of denial is an emotional one. Something has happened that is so terrible, or so frightening that they just don't want to deal with it.
The second type of denial comes from changes to the brain. The brain literally refuses to process certain types of information. For example, there is one type of injury to the brain where the patient cannot receive visual information on the left side. (homonymous hemianopia) Their vision is gone on the entire left side—but they don't know it. They may bump into walls, or, if driving a car, they may run into things. If drawing a picture, they may leave out half the drawing.
I think I must have had the second one beansy. It took me almost a month to discover that I had homnymous hemianopia. It was during rehab and I was trying to do a connect the dots...I couldn't do it because I couldn't see the whole left side of the page. Even after this discovery I didn't know it was in both eyes (until a few months ago actually). Since it's so much more noticable in my left eye (because I guess most of what I'm missing in my right is my nose!) Beansy is so darn smart!!
I did the same thing Trish, never realized there was a real problem but it took me years to understand it was both eyes, not one. Even my mother called me a "bull in a china shop", and she knew something. She always told me never to talk about it, but that was her deal and it was many many years ago. I did what she said, and only when the internet was available did I figure this stuff out. I have no records, and at some point wrote to our family doctor about a year before he passed away. He wrote back and said that I had had a AVM bleed in the right occipital lobe. If not for that, I still would have said tumor or blood clot. I still do forget there is a left world, a left hand, knee, etc. I barrel through life at times like I can see. Homonymous Hemianopia is so much more than loss of peripheral vision. It is perception problems (trying to figure out what I am seeing sometimes takes a few minutes), it is, in my case, a spatial disorder where I can get lost anywhere. And I will try to do what sighted people do, even to riding a bicycle. I was never allowed to go ice skating again after the AVM, but they let me ride a bike. Go figure.